A Cache Of Cookies Part I: When Indoors

A week has come and gone, the heavens have opened, the sun has shone and the rains have returned. The city is once again covered in a mantle of grey clouds, and is perhaps bracing itself for another destructive run. The rains’ homecoming was at first received gladly, although now that it has left our state with a potential billion dollar clean up bill, we are hoping that Mother Nature eases up a bit. Bring on the rains but hold off the floods and gale force winds please. If only the weather was as easy as ordering a chicken chow mein at your local take away; but unfortunately we have to take what can get.

Now although it’s great that we are finally getting some rain, what comes with it isn’t always that agreeable. The temperature has dropped and it is officially freezing outside, the hems of my jeans always seems to get wet no matter how high my shoes are, the ground is eternally muddy and my hair in a perpetual state of frizz. Now it may seem that this is just a lot of whining and it probably is; so what then is one to do when one is not in the disposition to contend with the wet weather and all that comes with it? Well I say, you stay home in your frumpy house clothes, forget about glamming yourself up and going out, your mascara will probably melt in the rain anyway, so just stay indoors and bake up a storm of your own. Well that’s what I did anyway.

A few months ago, I bought an Australian Women’s Weekly cookie compendium aptly titled Cookies. I looked at it, read the recipes, intently pored over the luscious photography then became too overwhelmed by the amount of recipes I wanted to make. I don’t know if this ever happens to you but when I get a new cookbook, the visual and palatal stimulation sometimes becomes too much for my imagination that I have to take a pause and put the book aside and leave it for later. That is exactly what happened to this book, it was shelved until my senses could cope with the cornucopia of sweet sights and ideas.

Now the question was which recipe would I make first? Well it so happens that on this particular rainy day, my pantry was going through a stocktake and clen out that was long overdue. I found jars of vegemite and packets of biscuits that had expiration dates literally from another millennium. I don’t know why I felt the need to hold on to packets of Le Snack from 1998 but nonetheless they were stashed in there as though waiting to be used as rations after some sort of nuclear fallout.

But aside from displaying my adeptness at hoarding food like a squirrel, I found a packet of dried cranberries hiding behind an expired jar of Vegemite. So I decided to make a batch of Lemon and Craisin Cookies. Right now, I have this thing for slice and bake cookies. They are extremely versatile and you can keep some dough in the fridge if you don’t want to have an abundance of baked cookies hanging around that you can’t eat.

I did slightly reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe by half and used caster sugar instead just because I had run out of icing sugar and wanted to retain a little bit of the tartness from the dried cranberries without losing the flavour in all that sugar. The Craisins are in fact already slightly sweetened, so you really don’t want to be eating yourself into a toothache. The recipe below is exactly like in the book, however you can reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe and still get a sweet aromatic cookie.

When baked to cookies crisp up although still remain crumbly once you bite into them. The sweetness and perfume of the lemon and the tangy bursts of cranberry are one of the many reasons to make this recipe. I must say though that these little cookies are incredibly moreish, but it seems to me that I say this about almost every cookie I make. Either the cookies are in fact moreish or I am just a big glutton, I prefer to stick to the former but you be the judge. Here is the original recipe below.

Slice and Bake: Lemon and Craisin Cookies
adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly: Cookies
makes 48 cookies



250g unsalted butter
1¼ cups icing (confectioner’s) sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest, grated finely
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups plain all-purpose flour, sifted
½ cup rice flour, sifted
¼ cup cornflour, sifted
¾ cup coarsely chopped craisins
1 egg, lightly whisked

Beat butter, icing sugar, vanilla extract and lemon zest in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Stir in sifted flours in two additions. Then add the egg.
Stir until the egg is incorporated and divide the mixture in half.
Knead each half on a lightly floured surface until smooth.
Roll each half into a 25cm log.
Wrap in baking paper and refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.

Preheat oven to 160°C. Prepare a baking tray with parchment paper.
Remove one of the logs from the fridge and slice into 1cm discs.
Shape into neat circles and place on the baking tray about 3cm apart.
Bake cookies for about 15-20 minutes.
Cool on wire racks.